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Softball's final pitch - for the time being - draws nearer
BEIJING - Down to its last swings, softball could use a headline-grabbing moment to show the International Olympic Committee that the sport, thrown out of the 2012 London Games, has global balance. On Sunday, it almost did.
No, the United States wasn't tested. The good-as-gold U.S. stayed on track for a fourth straight Olympic title as Monica Abbott pitched five perfect innings and the Americans hit three homers in their 20th straight win, 8-0 over the Netherlands, a rookie on the five-ringed diamond.
But Japan, one of the game's super powers, needed to rally for a 5-2 victory over Venezuela, another Olympic first-timer which led 2-1 in the fifth inning and nearly knocked off the defending bronze medalist and 2004 silver medalist. Japan was forced to climb out of a hole to defeat Venezuela.
-Until the final out, the Venezuelans believed they could win. Why not? They had stunned medal contender Canada 2-0 on Saturday, one day after an 8-0 triumph over the Netherlands had given the South American nation its first win in a women's Olympic team sport
"When we stepped on the field, we knew we could do it," said first baseman Maria Soto.
To softball backers, Venezuela's victory over Canada was important, a sign the world is closing the gap on the U.S. and other top teams. A win over Japan would have caused a sonic boom like the sound when American slugger Crystl Bustos connects with her bat.
In the end, the Venezuelans came up short but walked off the field with their heads held high.
"Any time you can compete with the best, it will give hope to the young ladies at home to believe that they can do it and play at the highest level," Soto said.
Don Porter, president of the International Softball Federation, sat in the VIP area behind home plate during the Japan-Venezuela game. He's been there for nearly every game since the tournament started, hosting IOC members he hopes to persuade to vote softball back into the 2016 games.
Softball lost its Olympic toehold three years ago in Singapore, when the IOC stripped the sport's certification. The vote was close: 52-52 with one abstention. It certainly wasn't a lopsided result like so many of the U.S. team's blowout wins.
One more 'yes' vote and softball would be worry free. Instead, it's fighting for its future and already sweating out a vote scheduled for October 2009, when it will ask for a spot on the 2016 program along with baseball, karate, squash, golf and roller sports.
Since that fateful day in 2005, Porter has spent nearly every waking moment trying to get softball, which made its debut at the 1996 Atlanta Games, a place back inside the rings.
"It took us 29 years, six months and 13 days to get softball into the Olympics," Porter said between sessions on Sunday. "Now we've got 13 months to get it back in."
To that end, Porter has spent the past two weeks in China shaking hands, bending ears, doing everything he can to convince fence-sitting IOC members that a sport played by an estimated 27 million people deserves its place alongside badminton, trampoline and BMX.
For the Venezuela-Japan game, he sat with IOC member Mario Vazquez Rana, the 14th committee member to visit Fengtai Softball Field since the games opened. Later this week, IOC president Jacques Rogge is scheduled to attend the medal-round games.
Among the many theories for softball's stunning banishment, the one Porter hears most is that the IOC's members, many of them from Europe, can't stomach the U.S. team's dominance.
The Americans steamrolled through the tournament in Athens, outscoring the field 51-1. They've been almost as superior in Beijing, winning their first six games by a combined 44-1 with five shutouts, four of them in games halted in five innings by the run-rule.
The one run the U.S. yielded - against Canada - was unearned, courtesy of three illegal pitches and an error.
Seeing the Americans annihilate an overmatched squad like the Dutch won't help Porter's cause with IOC members who can't see past the final numbers on the scoreboard. But he's encouraged by strong attendance figures (113,000 fans through five sessions), shorter games (an average of 1 hour, 46 minutes) and a more competitive tournament if only among the teams fighting for silver and bronze.
In a few days, softball's Olympic run will end after 12 years. Porter is optimistic it will be back in eight more, but there are no guarantees.
He visualized the final out in the gold medal game, and he's not quite sure what it will mean.
"It's going to be sad," he said. "Some of the athletes have been through four Olympics. The last game, the last out, the medal presentation. You look in the faces of those athletes, it's great to be up there on the stand to get that recognition and the medal. But what will they be thinking? Are we coming back? I wish I could tell them right now, 'You're coming back.'
"But I can't."
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